Back in the day, customers used to value low prices and high quality above everything else. However today, customer service has emerged as the key competitive differentiation factor for brands. According to Microsoft, 95% of customers state that customer service is the most important aspect when it comes to their choice and loyalty to a brand.
Meeting the ever-evolving customer expectations without the use of the right set of tools and technology, is no easy feat. This is why we have compiled a list of the top 7 customer service tools that can help you deliver unbeatable support experiences. Let’s dive in!
What are customer service tools?
A customer service tool is any hardware, software or other utilities used by the support team to offer simple, efficient and quick resolution to customer issues.
Customer service reps are the front line of defense for your business. The first impression they make on your customers is the deciding factor for whether or not a customer will do future business with your brand.
However, as businesses scale and customers grow in number, support reps may find it challenging to keep up. Especially, if you put all the pressure on your support agents, customer complaints are bound to rise dramatically and customer wait times will inevitably increase.
All of this means that you must provide your customer care representatives with the necessary tools to enable them to answer customer queries faster and more effectively. Customer support tools not only make it easier for customers to receive help, but also enable your support team to work more efficiently.
Benefits of using customer service tools
Provide customers with self-service options
Businesses can use customer service tools to enable self-service options, allowing customers to solve problems on their own. Customers prefer self-service to human assistance, and providing them with this option improves their experience.
Allow businesses to scale more effectively.
Your company can scale more effectively if you have the necessary tools for managing large numbers of client interactions. To keep track of customer tickets, your organization can use help desk software instead of depending on an email inbox.
Boost customer satisfaction
Customers who are satisfied are less inclined to switch brands. According to a recent study, 43% of buyers spend more money on brands to whom they are loyal. When your customer care representatives have the necessary information and tools, they can respond to customer queries quickly and in a personalized way.
Assist agents to accomplish more in less time
Your service agents are frequently pushed to their limits due to several support channels and the growing need for personalisation, causing burnout. Customer service tools will help them manage, respond, and resolve multiple customer complaints simultaneously, without additional effort.
Understand your customers better
Customer service software and tools not only upgrade your customer experiences but also help you get to know your customers better. You can use these tools to gather customer data and feedback in real-time and use it to make well-informed business decisions.
7 Customer service tools to include to your tech stack
1. AI-powered ticketing system to categorize service requests
Every business must implement a system to track the customer queries received on email, call, social media, messaging apps and other platforms, to avoid any slipping through the cracks.
An AI-powered ticketing software, with the help of machine learning algorithms, can categorize the service requests on the basis of priority. This will help your support team to delegate and handle customer problems quickly and more efficiently.
2. All-in-one ‘Inbox’ to offer omnichannel support
An all-in-one inbox solution enables you to get a comprehensive view of your customer’s entire journey across channels in a single unified view.
This will help your agents get access to all the past tickets and interactions to get superior context into customer problems and solve them efficiently.
3. Real-time chat and calls to deliver on-demand support
Real-time communication channels assist your customer service team in providing instant support to the customers. Live chat has a significant impact on client retention and satisfaction.
According to Invesp, Customers who use live chat spend 60% more on each purchase than those who don’t. Furthermore, 77% of buyers will not make a purchase if live chat help is not available.
Including a live chat function in your website or mobile app can help you engage with your consumers in real time and offer proactive customer service.
4. Conversational AI to make customer interactions more personalized
Traditional chatbots may help you automate FAQs but they’re not the best option when it comes to offering human-like support. Customers don’t like robotic responses and they expect chatbots to understand what they’re saying. This is where conversational AI plays an important role.
AI-enabled chatbots are much more sophisticated at understanding customer intent and emotions as well as respond with more empathy. They are one of the most effective self-service options and can resolve up to 80% of customer queries without any human intervention.
The best thing is that they come with reinforcement learning capabilities that allow them to improve with every interaction and do not require much training data.
5. Social listening to gather actionable feedback
Are you tracking what your customers are saying about your brand on social media? If not, now would be the best time to start.
Social listening and monitoring technologies can help you stay on top of brand sentiment and, more crucially, what your customers desire. You may use these tools to keep a careful eye on what customers are saying about your business and competition, and then gratify them with special offers tailored to their specific needs.
Monitoring brand mentions will allow you to promptly identify customer issues and respond to them before they become a corpus of negative reviews.
6. Customer feedback surveys to check customer pulse
What many companies tend to overlook is the importance of knowing your customers well. Customer experiences and feedback surveys like customer satisfaction index (CSAT), customer effort score (CES) and net promoter score (NPS) unearth qualitative and quantitative data on your overall performance.
Customers tend to be more candid in these surveys than they would be in person. The data that you get from these surveys is a gold-mine of insights that you can use to retain more customers and get a competitive edge.
7. Customer analytics dashboard to get a bird’s eye view of important KPIs
Reporting software helps in the measurement, analysis and tracking of a wide range of customer service efforts. It also consolidates your data into a single, interactive dashboard that you can use to make informed decisions and track bottom-line results.
It’s easy to become overwhelmed by information. Knowing what to track and what to do with it is crucial. A consumer analytics dashboard should help you get things in perspective and streamline this process.
To sum up
Customers today are aware that businesses are fighting tooth and nail for their attention. With increasing competition in nearly every industry, it’s getting more and more challenging to retain customers. The best way to ensure long-lasting customer relationships is to offer unparalleled customer support.
Support tools help you stay on top of customer problems and solve them proactively, without making customers wait. However, you don’t need tens of different tools to offer delightful customer experiences. What you need is an all-in-one platform like Yellow.ai agent assist ‘Inbox’ that helps you enhance customer support across chat, email and voice from one place.
Inbox comes packed with features like AI-powered ticket management, real-time analytics reporting, no-code workflow builder, NLP-powered response suggestions, auto translation of customer queries, easy integration with third-party applications like CRM and a lot more. It empowers your support agents to intelligently resolve queries across channels, through one Inbox.
Get in touch with our experts to learn more about how Inbox can improve the efficiency of your customer support function.
